The sense of touch is one of the five senses by which we gather information about the world around us. The sense of touch gives rise to feelings of pleasure and pain and is used to determine the shape, hardness, texture, and temperature of objects. The sense of touch is used extensively in the field of medicine because the shape and hardness of body internals is often an excellent guide in diagnosing and treating disease.
One of the most publicized uses of the sense of touch in medical diagnosis is the detection of breast cancer. One out of every eleven women in the United States develops breast cancer. It is the most common form of cancer in woman and is the chief cause of cancer deaths among United States women. Early detection of breast cancer is considered extremely important in treating the disease. Breast cancer is characterized by the formation of lumps in the breast. These lumps can be detected by X-ray radiation photography or by manual examination. The known tendency of X-ray radiation to cause various types of cancer generally prevents its routine use for detection. Accordingly, most breast cancers are discovered by the detection of lumps by physical examination of the breasts. Manual examination of the breasts is included by most physicians in their routine examinations of adult women. To help with early detection, the American Cancer Society also recommends monthly self-examinations for women.
To reduce friction and thereby facilitate movement of the hands across the breasts, the American Cancer Society recommends that the monthly self-examinations be conducted during a bath or shower when the skin is wet and soapy. For any number of reasons, many women find it inconvenient to take the additional time for self-examination during their bath or shower. And, for obvious reasons, it is not practical to use water and/or soap as a skin lubricant for breast examination when partially clothed, e.g., at a physician's office. Creams, powders, or lotions are more suitable as friction reducers, but still are rarely used because of the mess. Therefore, most physicians and women conduct breast examinations by using their hands directly on dry skin.
Unfortunately, manual examination of the breasts does not ensure that a lump will be detected. In an article entitled "Physicians' Abilities to Detect Lumps in Silicone Breast Models" published in the Apr. 19, 1985 issue of the Journal of The American Cancer Society, (Vol. 253, No. 15, pp. 2224-2228) Dr. Suzanne W. Fletcher et al. of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill described a study which tested the ability of 80 physicians to detect lumps of varying sizes, hardness, and depth in silicone breast models. Dr. Fletcher et al. found that the physicians were able to detect only 44 percent of the lumps.
It is not difficult to understand why the detection results were so poor in the study. When conducting a breast cancer examination with bare hands on dry skin, the examiner must ignore the unwanted touch stimuli (i.e., the "noise", e.g., temperature, texture, and, if a self-examination, stimuli from the breast itself) in favor of the desired touch stimuli which enable the determination of shape and hardness of an object (i.e., the "signal"). The sense of touch is clearly an ability which can be developed with practice. For example, thousands of blind persons are able to "read" braille lettering, but a sighted person touching braille for the first time is usually unable to distinguish the number or pattern of the protrusions. Consequently, Dr. Fletcher et al. recommended more training for physicians to better develop their senses of touch.
Paschal, U.S. Pat. No. 2,694,396, issued Nov. 16, 1954, discloses and claims a massaging pad formed by sewing together a pair of satin sheets in such a way that friction between the sheets is reduced (the "warp" of one sheet is disposed at a substantial angle to the "warp" of the other). Paschal also discloses a modified form of the device comprising two sheets of flexible plastic material fused or sealed together with a lubricant on the inside. The Paschal device is allegedly an aid to massagers because it reduces the friction between the massager's hands and the body part being massaged. The device does not, however, enhance the sense of touch. Instead, the device masks the sense of touch because it is made of materials which do not readily transmit touch stimuli.